Real Madrid coach Álvaro Arbeloa appeared in a press conference to talk about tomorrow's match against Barcelona in El Clasico, in the 35th round of La Liga, at Camp Nou.

The coach said in his speech: 'What has happened in recent days? I am very proud of the decisiveness and transparency shown by the club. The players have already expressed their regret and apologized to the fans and the club. I will not publicly attack my players. I am proud of them over the past four months for what they have given me and what it means to be a Real Madrid player. I always set an example to follow and talk a lot with his son Roberto. For me, there is one player who represents the essence of a Real Madrid player, and that is Juanito. I believe he is the only player we Real Madrid fans cheer for. He understood the essence of Real Madrid and gave his all for this badge in every match, but if there is one thing we love about him, it’s that we felt he was one of us, even though he made mistakes, as anyone does.'

He added: 'Fede and Tchouameni are heroes, and I am proud of them. I will not allow the professionalism of my players to be questioned. Many lies are told. I am the primary responsible, along with my players, for not meeting our fans' expectations this season. But I have been here for four months, and I am very proud of my players and the way they welcomed me. Clearly, frustration and anger can lead to situations we do not want, but we must use this frustration and anger to deliver a great match tomorrow. This is what we should focus our energy on.'

He continued: 'Do you feel responsible for the situation? I am responsible for everything that happens at Real Madrid, and if you want to point fingers, I am here. I repeat again, it seems I have not been clear enough, leaking what happens inside the locker room I consider a betrayal to Real Madrid and absolute disloyalty to this badge, and it saddens me greatly.'

He emphasized: 'For me, the most serious and painful thing is that what happens in the Real Madrid locker room should stay in the Real Madrid locker room. These are situations that do not represent Real Madrid because they should not happen, but of course, I have been through worse. In the end, we were unlucky, and it ended with Fede getting injured. The club handled the matter very well, and the players accepted the consequences and apologized. From now on, I will only think about tomorrow's match.'

About El Clasico: 'I hope it will be a great match against a big competitor who offers an outstanding level in the league, as they win all their matches at their stadium and play great football. We have a great desire to play the match that attracts the most attention in the world, and we have the ambition to perform well and go for the win.'

On some players' anger over not participating: 'When a player does not play at Real Madrid, it is purely a sporting decision, and as I always say, perhaps in other teams 22 players can participate, but here I can only field 11 players. And when I choose these 11, and I repeat this for I don't know how many times in these press conferences, it has nothing to do with being dissatisfied with those who do not participate, but because I choose who I think deserves or is most suitable for that match. Many lies have been told about players not participating due to problems with me, or because I am dissatisfied with their professionalism, and a thousand other stories. These are not just inaccurate news, but absolute lies. What really matters to me is what our fans think... they can be completely reassured about this locker room and these players. The only thing they should demand from us is that Real Madrid returns to winning again.'

He continued: 'We know that spending two years in this club without trophies is not easy, we have gone through similar situations throughout history, and perhaps the younger ones do not remember them, but we have been through very difficult circumstances; 30 years without winning the European Cup, and 12 years between the ninth and tenth... and when I arrived here, the club had spent 5 years without passing the round of 16, and we continued for another year as well. We have gone through periods of decline, that is for sure... but we must overcome them together. No one is more prepared than our president to turn these situations around. I remember well how the club was before he arrived and what he achieved later, he is certainly the most title-winning president in the club's history, and he succeeded in putting Real Madrid in the place it deserves. And with all that, we have to fight to bring Real Madrid back to the top.'

On not being able to resolve the Tchouameni and Valverde crisis in the locker room: 'My office is not inside the Real Madrid locker room, I wish it were, then maybe I would have taken responsibility for everything that happens and controlled everything completely. I repeat, the summary here, or the consequences, or what can be understood from this situation, is that the coach should have stopped all this. And I repeat again... I take that, I take responsibility, it is a situation - as I said before - that is not pleasant, and the players realize they have made mistakes. I think this should be a lesson for everyone, and there is nothing more to say. I think we should turn the page on what happened, learn from it, and continue on the path of Real Madrid, and do not forget that tomorrow there is a match between Barcelona and Real Madrid.'

He emphasized: 'It is not easy to accept two seasons without titles, and it is not easy to absorb everything that has happened, and this makes the players in this locker room - as I always say - to be a Real Madrid player you must have great ambition, be very demanding of yourself, and always want to win, every player risks a lot, with their reputation, and fights to defend and be up to this badge; so it is certainly not an easy situation for all of us to accept, and to know that we have to do things better, change and improve and think, then start again to be stronger, but I see a healthy locker room, I say it honestly, it is healthy. And I see a locker room ready to win again. I am sure everyone next year will be with more experience, it is objective that this locker room is 'younger' than the one I was in at Real Madrid for 7 years, and in the end, all these experiences will make them all grow, I am confident that next year they will come with more energy, more strength, more experience, and a deeper understanding of what this badge means. And I repeat: there is nothing during these four months that makes me say I am not happy and proud of this locker room.'

About Mbappe's travel during his recovery period from injury and his smiling when entering and leaving the sports city: 'Trying to take a scene of a player leaving training smiling out of context is - I repeat - an attempt to exploit a situation to put things out of place. Just as happened with Alvaro Carreras at the Espanyol stadium; as soon as a teammate got injured and another was ready to enter his place, the matter was circulated incorrectly. I can only defend Alvaro Carreras, his professionalism, the treatment he always gave me and all his teammates, and the quality of work he provides. I think he is a young guy with a great future, and when he played it was because he deserved it, and when he did not play it was because another teammate deserved it. As for Kylian Mbappe, I think all Madrid fans know the effort he made to come to Real Madrid; he had everything in his previous team, and he had to give up many things to be in his dream club. We have all seen pictures of Kylian as a child in a Real Madrid suit, and as I said before, and as I mentioned last week: I feel my authority is complete. What I do is control what my players do in the training field and on the field in general. In this sense, I feel completely like a Real Madrid coach, I think Real Madrid players like any player in the world should feel that the coach has authority regardless of his name, and regardless of his contract years; because in the end, they respect the Real Madrid coach, and I think this is the most important thing as a player.'

He added: 'Do you think José Mourinho is still one of us? Yes.'

About the person who leaks what happens inside the locker room: 'I do not work for the CIA or anything like that. And in the Real Madrid locker room, I do not accuse the players or anyone else because I cannot do that, there are many people around the first team of Real Madrid, and I am not here to point fingers at anyone. And as I told you again, I try to be an example, and what happens in my private talks with the players will always remain between me and them, I think this is the way I should act, and this is what I feel the situation of this locker room should be, to set the example for the players and the entire club.'

About the team's deteriorating results: 'The only thing that worries me and what I think about is how I could have made my team win more matches, I think there were moments of extreme difficulty during these four months, and I know the situation I faced as soon as I arrived, and I know what we went through, we won very complex matches, and we won in the knockout stages against City with many absences; it is a team with a great squad and a great coach, and after they beat us they won a title with a 2-0 result against Arsenal - who are now in the Champions League final - and they beat Chelsea 0-3 at their stadium, and Liverpool 4-0, and we did it by winning both matches (against City), and we won two matches against Benfica - a team that did not lose a single match in the league - and we beat the great Atletico Madrid. We played big matches, and the players put in a tremendous effort, I certainly feel that on the day of the Bayern match there were things - as happens in football - that go beyond our control. And I often wonder what I could have done better to win the matches that slipped away from us in the league, despite there being things that are sometimes hard to accept, but as for me, this is what worries me the most and what I think about deeply: how do I make my players better? How do I make my team better? And how could I have helped them more to win, given the conditions and difficulties we faced and what I had to deal with.'

He continued: 'I have been criticized a lot for not talking about tactical concepts, or football, or these more precise technical aspects... and always since I have been here, I have focused heavily on the values I want to see in my team, and it seems that what I said last week attracted a lot of attention, and I think this is what I have always been saying: we can do things better or worse on the field, and we will have to work, but there is something that represents Real Madrid and must always be reflected by the team, which is: effort, team spirit, solidarity, ambition, passion, and this is what we must always show, there is no excuse for us as a team not to show that every day. After that, tactically and football-wise, there are certainly many things we need to work on and improve, but for me, these values should never be absent from any team, and certainly should not be absent from a team like Real Madrid.'

About Aurelien Tchouameni's participation tomorrow: 'Aurelien will be in the squad list tomorrow.'

He concluded about the future: 'My desire is to win tomorrow's match, that is the future that concerns me and that is where I put all my energy... Thank you very much.'